


nampire the vampire

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/F, IT'S A SPOOF. IT'S A BIT. IT'S A JOKE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Being an FBI profiler has its perks because I get free therapy and can wear whatever I want, so I choose to wear plaid shirts and tweed jackets and sweaters on account of me being repressed and gay. I live in Wolf Trap Virginia (if you don’t know where that is, get da hell out of here!) which sounds like it should have some thematic resonance but doesn’t, unless you count the time I’ll murder and dismember a furry and display its flayed corpse in a museum and everyone will know I did it but it will never be mentioned again.Welcome to my twisted mind. Graphic design is my passion.THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG FBI PROFILER, WILLA TRISCUIT, A STRING OF VAMPIRIC MURDERS, AND A MYSTERIOUS THERAPIST NAMED NAMPIRE SPECTER.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Willa Triscuit/Nampire Specter
Comments: 35
Kudos: 106





	nampire the vampire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oscarisaac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscarisaac/gifts).



My name is Willamina Dark’ness Dementia Raven Triscuit, but you can call me Willa Triscuit for short. I have curly black hair and sometimes wear glasses and people often tell me I look like some celebrity whose name I always forget but he was in a movie about the invention of the vibrator. I’m an FBI profiler, which means I work for the FBI (if you don’t know what that stands for get da hell outta here!) and it’s a super sexy job where I think about killing people for a living. It’s something Jacqueline Crawford (a major fuckin hottie) asked me to do, which is a great idea even though I’m already super mentally unstable on account of being repressed and gay. But being forced to look at gory crimes all day even though I’m already off the shits can’t possibly be a bad idea, right? And it can’t possibly pique my buried desire to shoot someone like ten times, which I’m absolutely certain I won’t do. I used to be a cop which means by definition I’m a massive cunt so don’t get it twisted and think I’m a decent person. Being an FBI profiler has its perks because I get free therapy and can wear whatever I want, so I choose to wear plaid shirts and tweed jackets and sweaters on account of me being repressed and gay. I live in Wolf Trap Virginia (if you don’t know where that is, get da hell out of here again!) which sounds like it should have some thematic resonance but doesn’t, unless you count the time I’ll murder and dismember a furry and display its flayed corpse in a museum and everyone will know I did it but it will never be mentioned again. 

Welcome to my twisted mind. Graphic design is my passion. 

  
**CHAPTER ONE: An alcoholic drink rich people take before a meal to stimulate their rich people appetites.**

I am a handsome, haunted woman with a naive focus. And as you can tell, I am _incredibly_ pretentious.

Reflective light flashed across my face, lighting up my eyes. All sound was dulled as if my ears were blocked, and the ambient noise of my circulatory system provided an organic him. I stared hard into middle distance, and then—

“Wow, that’s fucked up,” I realised as I used my super special autism-boosted Empathy Powerz to discern how Mrs. and Mr. Marlow got murked. When I’m in a crime scene, I always make sure to take a minute out of everyone’s time to do a magical girl transformation into a murderer. Time spins backwards, there’s a FWUM FWUM FWUM sound, and I recreate the deaths inside my mind. There’s a whole bunch of walking backwards and cgi arterial sprays decorating walls with incredibly artistic patterns. This is how I solve mysteries - and as if all that weren’t weird enough, I actually get it RIGHT. 

“I shoot Mr. Marlow twice, severing jugulars and carotids with near-surgical precision,” I intoned dramatically, trying to remember what a carotid even is. “He will die watching me take what is his away from him.” (Even though he actually died on his back facing the ceiling). After a moment, I added my signature catchphrase: “Graphic design is my passion.”

I took a hot second to revel in the aftermath of unrestrained violence, repeated the catchphrase with less movement of my lips so it sounded darker and grittier, solved the rest of the crime, and called it a day.

Getting in my car, I drove back Quantico Virginia, somehow mangling a four-hour road trip into a one-second Netflix transition, and the next morning I gave my students an annoying Professor Lecture in a Scruffy Lesbian Outfit even though I’m totally straight. In this annoying Professor Lecture I basically talked about uhhhhhh.

Then Jacqueline Crawford, Head of Behavioural Science Unit at the FBI, barged into my classroom and was all “I think we should call my new museum the Evil Minds Museum” and I was all “No because that makes it sound like we’re in a Bryan Fuller NBC show” and she looked into the camera like she was on The Office and was like “Wow I have some really bad news for you.”

I was about to ask what the hell she meant by that when she changed the subject. “Ms. Triscuit, d’ya wanna help us catch a murderer who abducted eight college aged girls?” she asked, and while I don’t give a shit about college aged girls there was like… absolutely NOTHING else poppin so I was like ‘fine.’ We went to Minnesota, where there was EVEN LESS poppin, and I was bored as SHIT until I saw the dead body of Elise Nichols and I was like ‘okay _now_ we’re talking.’ And then Keverly Batz, the smartest of all the FBI agents who puts the ‘bi’ in FBI if you know what I mean, made an astonishing discovery - there was no blood in Elise Nichols’s body. Bitch was completely exsanguinated! Although apparently she was killed by being chucked onto a pair of antlers. Which… ow. So we were looking for a wannabe vampire - or, as Pimmy Jrice (or maybe Zian Beller) pointed out, some dude absolutely obsessed with the annual Red Cross Blood Drive. Or as Beller (or maybe Jrice) pointed out, it could be Bunnicula. Although as I recall Bunnicula, like a pussy, only drained the juice out of vegetables.

Coward.

The only other clue we got was a tiny shred of metal Keverly pulled out of Elise Nichols’s clothes, so we left Minnesota to fly it back to our labs in Virginia. On the plane ride home, I popped like four aspirins because I had a killer headache - this will be relevant later. Once off the plane, I unbuttoned my shirt so I could be just a lil slutty - this will _not_ be relevant later. I drove home to Wolf Trap Virginia, which is lame because they don’t even trap wolves there and also lame because it’s in V*rginia (censored for emotional distress reasons), and I adopted a seventeenth stray cat on the way.

*

The next morning, Jacqueline Crawford confronted me in the bathroom, asking “What are you doing in here,” and I wanted to say “What do you think I’m doing bitch I’m in a _bathroom_ ,” but I didn’t because she’s the Head of Behavioural Science Unit at the FBI aaaaand also my boss.

“Do you respect my judgement, Willa?” she asked. “Hm?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Good, because we will stand a better chance of catching this guy with you in the saddle.”

“Yeah, I’m in the saddle,” I got out. Unscripted conversation was always way out of my league, plus I was 

  1. In a bathroom
  2. Backed against a sink
  3. _By my boss_
  4. And she didn’t even have the decency to be remotely sexy about it because she’s happily married and also I’m straight. 



“I’m just, um, confused which direction I’m pointing.” Did that make sense? I hoped that made sense. Jacqueline looked exasperated with me. “I don’t know this kind of psychopath!” I burst out. “Never read about him. I don’t even know if he’s a psychopath.” I also didn’t know if he was a _he_ , but I figured as much because, I mean, _men_. “He’s not insensitive! He’s not shallow!”

“You know something about him,” Jacqueline guessed.

“He feels bad.”

“Well that kind of defeats the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn’t it?”

Was this seriously the head of the FBI Behavioural Science Unit? “Duh!”

“Sensitive psychopath,” Jacqueline summarised. I wondered if she just really liked saying the word psychopath. 

“And vampire,” I reminded her.

She sighed and scrubbed a hand down her face. “And vampire.”

Anyway, Jacqueline had possession of the FBI’s singular shared brain cell and decided to talk to this guy named Dr. Anal Bloom—sorry, _Alan_ Bloom—about me. Jacqueline was like “Hey I think Willa Triscuit might not be entirely stable” and Alan was like “Why do you think Willa Triscuit isn’t entirely stable” and Jacqueline was like “Because she failed the ‘Are You Stable’ FBI uquiz” and Alan was like “That’s rough buddy.” Now me personally, I don’t even know _how_ you fail a uquiz, but at any rate, Alan informed Jacqueline that I deal with incredible amounts of fear (true) and that I probably shouldn’t be out in the field thinking about killing people for a living (probably also true). Jacqueline relinquished her hold on the brain cell to completely disregard this advice, and instead went into Baltimore to visit the office of one of Alan Bloom’s colleagues, Dr. Nampire Specter.

When Crawford knocked, after taking like a five-hour drive to get there because apparently she had nothing better to do, two people came to the door. One was a dumpy, short, curly haired man with plump cheeks, broad shoulders, and a small potbelly. The other was a thin woman with black hair, high cheekbones, and the palest skin Jacqueline had ever seen - except, of course, from the myriad of dead people she saw every week. She immediately assumed the short pudgy man was Nampire.

“Doctor Specter?” she asked him.

“Uhh,” he said, panicking. “Nope.”

Jacqueline pursed her lips and readjusted her outstretched hand.

“Doctor Specter?”

Doctor Specter inclined her head and disdainfully shook the proffered hand.

“I’m Special Agent Jacqueline Crawford with the FBI. May I come in?”

“I hate to be discourteous, but this is a private exit for my patients,” Nampire Specter informed her in a mellifluous voice tinged with an Eastern European accent. “You may wait in the waiting room.”

“Wh—”

“Waiting room.”

Leaving Jacqueline gaping, she coolly dismissed her patient Franklyn (“I’ll see you next week”) and closed the door behind her, leaving the Head of Behavioural Science out in the hallway for fifteen minutes just for the drama of it all. 

“Please, come in,” she finally said, forcing a flat smile as she opened the door. “May I ask what this is about?”

Jacqueline initially ignored the question, instead opting to look at a small table covered by sketches of various buildings and landscapes.

“Are these yours, Doctor?” she asked, indicating a rendition of an intensely gothic cathedral rearing out of a sea of mist. 

“Yes.”

“The amount of detail is incredible.”

Nampire smiled, lifted a pencil into her thin fingers, and shaved off a bit of the point with a scalpel. “Learned very early a scalpel cuts better points than a pencil sharpener.” 

“Cool.” Jacqueline apparently didn’t find it worrying that Nampire just casually had a scalpel. “And these drawings got you an internship at Johns Hopkins, right?”

“Agent Crawford?” Nampire asked sultrily, putting down the pencil (but not the scalpel). Her eyes drifted toward Jacqueline’s throat. “I am beginning to suspect that you’re investigating me.”

Jacqueline stopped, then laughed aloud. “No, no. You were referred to me by Dr. Alan Bloom in the psychology department of Georgetown.”

Nampire set down the scalpel, her demeanour changing to something much more relaxed. “Ah.”

“I’d like you to help me with a psychological profile.”

Nampire’s eyebrows flicked up. “Of whom?”

“Willa Dark’ness Dementia Raven Triscuit.”

So yeah. Alan Bloom and Jacqueline Crawford recommended that I, Willa Dark’ness Dementia Raven Triscuit, get an ‘official psychological evaluation’ from a ‘psychiatrist’ who didn’t have a ‘personal relationship’ to ‘me.’ I really disliked the wording of ‘personal relationship’ because it made it seem like Alan Bloom and I had banged. We hadn’t banged, although I guess I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to the concept. The thing is, although Alan Bloom was kind of a friend, he avoided being in a room alone with me. Maybe this is a thing neurotypicals do, but like... I’m _normal_. And I don’t think that’s a great way to treat a ‘friend.’ Although, like, in fairness I probably also wouldn’t want to be alone in a room with me.

Where was I? Yeah. Alan Bloom is cute and smart, but he’s also completely bland (so bland he acts like a woman written by a male screenwriter), so whatever. It’s probably good that instead Jacqueline set me up to see Dr. Specter, who was apparently an ex-surgeon turned therapist and forensic psychiatrist (whatever the fuck ‘forensic psychiatrist’ even means, and honestly half the time I think the FBI just makes up terms to sound dancy. I mean fancy).

*

I met Dr. Specter the following morning, after Jacqueline Crawford had finished ranting to Keverly and and Beller (or maybe Jrice) about how this internet clown named Fredericka Lounds had posted some glorified and gore-ified rendition of the antler-mount-murder of Elise Nichols to her tumblr blog. Everyone was now ignoring the myriad of crimes they could be solving and instead viewing and assessing the mobile theme of Lounds’s blog, crime-tattle.tumblr.com. I was like ‘doesn’t the Head of Behavioural Science at the F.B.I. have better things to do than scroll through content on tumblr dot com’ but apparently nobody has better things to do than scroll through content on tumblr dot com. After scrolling through some content on tumblr dot com, I went up to Jacqueline’s office, and there discovered the woman I’d later learn was to be my ‘therapist,’ whatever a ‘therapist’ is.

“—And Lounds got ahold of a picture and posted the whole story on her tumblr blog,” Jacqueline was finishing, telling the story for what was probably the third time. 

“Tasteless,” I remarked.

The woman turned to look at me, and I got my first look at Dr. Nampire Specter. Burgundy three-piece suit. Black hair, pale skin, oddly reddish eyes that I didn’t look too closely at since I persistently avoided eye contact like any self-respecting possible autistic. Dr. Specter gave me a once-over.

“You have trouble with taste,” she observed, drawing close to me. “Your thoughts are often not tasty. No effective barriers, so you make forts. Associations come quickly, as do forts. I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams. There are no forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.”

“Bitch?? You’ve known me for two seconds??”

Jacqueline snorted. Nampire smiled. “I’m sorry, Will,” she said. “Observing is what we do. I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off.”

“Speaking of shutting things, why don’t you shut your mouth?” I muttered.

“That’s enough, Willa,” Jacqueline reprimanded me. I put up my middle finger at her.

“Don’t psychoanalyse me,” I snapped to Nampire. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lecture.”

“On what?” Nampire asked innocently.

“On psychoanalysing,” I admitted reluctantly, and stormed out of the room.

Of course, I did all the storming out for show and lingered right on the other side of the door, desperately wanting to hear what they had to say about me.

“What Willa Triscuit has is pure empathy,” Dr. Specter was saying seriously. “She can assume your point of view, or mine, and—”

BORING. I tuned out the next few seconds.

“...And this vampire you’re looking for,” Nampire was saying, and I could picture her intently studying the Cool Crime Board Jacqueline had set up. I could hear the undercurrent of a smile in her voice. “I think I can help dear Willa learn a great deal about him.”

I rolled my eyes and left the hallway to give my lecture.

*

FUCKING YIKES BRO. The next week, in Minnesota, there was yet another gristly murder. An adolescent girl was found impaled on a massive mechanical sculpture of a bat head, displayed in a field, with wounds similar to those discovered on the body of Elise Nichols. I had to reconfigure my initial assessment that nothing was poppin in Minnesota. Nothing was poppin - but people were _droppin_. Like flies, and like my grades in senior year of high school.

Yeehaw.

Five hours later, Jacqueline, Keverly, and Jrice (or maybe Beller) were standing in a Minnesota field, staring at the crime scene. “The bat sculpture head was reported stolen last night about a mile from here,” Jacqueline was saying.

“So no head?” I asked, jumping on a skateboard and throwing my phone to the ground.

Jacqueline ignored me. “Minneapolis homicide already made a statement. They’re calling this murderer the ‘Minnesota Shrike.’”

“Like the bird?” Keverly asked.

“Like the Witcher character?” Jrice (or maybe Beller) asked. 

“Like the Hozier song?” I asked.

Jacqueline once again turned toward the camera like she was on The Office. “So the thing about youth culture is… I don’t really understand it. Guys, comb the area for forensic evidence.”

Keverly and Jrice (or maybe Beller) combed the area for forensic evidence while I pulled out a comb and tried to remember what the word forensic meant. 

“AHSJFHSJHJSFHSJKFS!” Jrice (or maybe Beller) suddenly shrieked.

“How did you make that sound with your mouth?” Keverly asked.

Jacqueline turned. “What is it."

Jrice (or maybe Beller) was bent over the dead woman’s displayed body. “She’s been drained of blood, too, just like the other ones. And this time there’s signs of a fight.”

“The victim was aware of what was happening to her,” I surmised. “The killer didn’t just want to end her life. He _wanted_ her to know it was ending. He wanted her to feel fear and pain as she died slowly—he would have found that...” I searched for the word. “Delectable.”

“Fantastic,” Jacqueline sighed, which is probably as appropriate a reaction to that kind of information as you can hope for.

“This isn’t the same murderer,” I said after everyone had finished digesting (pun intended) the information about the blood. “This isn’t the same man who killed Elise Nichols and the seven other girls.”

“Great!” Beller (or maybe Jrice) hollered. “We came out here for nothing!”

“Not for nothing,” I snapped. “This murder helped me learn a great deal about the other one.”

Jacqueline gave me her ‘please do enlighten us’ face. 

“The man who killed Elise wanted to honour his victims,” I explained. “This Shrike wanted to…” I curled my lip in a way that I hoped looked super derisive and edgy. “ _Mock_ them.”

“You think this is a copycat killer?” Jacqueline asked.

I groaned and flung my arms out. “If you would just listen to what I’ve been preaching and praying and saying! This killer, this vampire,” I gestured to the tableau in front of me, “Mutilated and displayed the body of his victim. Our first guy, the ‘sensitive psychopath,’ never brutalised his victims.”

“Are you a moron?” Keverly asked. “ _He hung them up on antlers._ ”

“Okay,” I said. “Fair point.”

Jacqueline ignored the spat and took possession of the shared brain cell again. “Tell me more about our first vampire,” she instructed me. “The man who killed Elise Nichols.”

I sighed. “He has a daughter. She’s the same age as the eight dead girls. Same hair colour, same eye colour, same height, same weight. She’s an only child; she’s leaving home. She’s the lifeblood of the family. Because he’s losing her, he wants - he _needs_ \- a substitute.”

“So he sucks the blood of girls who look just like her.”

I shrugged. “Men, amiright?”

“And how do you know all this?” Keverly asked.

I dabbed. 

“And what about the copycat vampire?” Jacqueline asked, demonstrating a remarkable ability to not fly off the handle. “This Minnesota Shrike?”

“An intelligent psychopath, particularly a sadist, is hard to catch,” I reminded her. Maybe I had the braincell by that point. “Harder to catch than like…” I tried to find an appropriate metaphor. “Um, a fish… that’s… really hard to catch.” No braincell then. I cleared my throat. “There’s no traceable motive. There’ll be no patterns. He will never kill like this again.” It was all kinda sexy from a certain perspective, all kinda funky fresh.

Jacqueline stared at me, and I realised I had said that last part out loud. I coughed weakly. “Joking. Uh, have Nampire draw up a psychological profile on this vampire. You seem to trust her professional opinion.”

“I do,” Jacqueline confirmed. “It’s good to have at least one other person who isn’t absolutely lost in the sauce about serial killers.”

“I only made _one_ flower crown edit,” Keverly said, annoyed.

Jrice (or maybe Beller) did the Marge Simpson potato pose. “I just think they’re neat!”

Keverly smacked him. “They kill people, jackass.”

“Maybe their victims just had really rancid vibes, Kev! did you ever think about that?”

“This guy impales and drains people.”

“Not people, teenagers. Have you ever, like, met a teenager?”

“ _You_ used to be a teenager!”

“So did you! And if someone had killed me as a teenager, let’s be real, I probably would have thanked them.”

“If someone had killed you as a teenager, I _definitely_ would have thanked them,” Keverly muttered.

“Hey!”

I stared at my coworkers. “Do you have to be this apeshit?” I finally asked.

“Of course we’re apeshit!” Jrice-or-maybe-Beller shouted. “FBI stands for Fail Bitches INTJ!”

“You idiot, it stands for Freaky Bureaucrats International.”

Jrice-or-maybe-Beller took five minutes to come up with a comeback. “No, it’s _Fabulous Babes_ International—”

“Nah, it’s Fhuman Brights Iviolations—”

Jacqueline rolled her eyes.

*

That night, I took two fingers of whiskey and a melatonin before going to bed, because that’s the introvert’s definition of a raging party.

I lay down. Sleep came slowly, and I dreamed of a magnificent stag. I was outside, barefoot, chilled by a sudden wind, feeling gooseflesh pop up beneath my fingers. The stag came toward me, massive and feathered like some brainless Old God. I was back home, standing at the edge of my property; my house sat alone amongst grass, lonely and buoyant in the night. A few bats flew across my vision, erratic desperate wingbeats, and alighted on the stag’s antlers. The bats became Elise Nichols, gored. Her dead face screamed, and she dissolved into cubes of blood and bat-flesh. More bats swept down and ate her. Wack.

“Wack,” I thought when I woke up back in my shitty Minnesota motel room. Someone, I soon discovered, was knocking at my door, and that was _way_ scarier than any nightmare. I roused myself, threw a robe over my sweaty pajamas, and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. Nervously unlocking the door, folding my arms around myself for protection, I beheld (because I’m the type of person to say ‘beheld’ instead of ‘saw’) none other than Dr. Nampire Specter, dressed once more in aged plush burgundy and this time in a long black cloak. She held a thermos and a small bag that could have held anything from a loaf of bread to the dead body of a cat. She smiled, revealing unusually sharp canines. “May I come in?”

I stared at her. “Where’s Crawford?”

She regarded me with faint amusement. “Deposed in court.”

She, apparently, was the type of person to say ‘deposed’ instead of ‘stuck.’ Or whatever ‘deposed’ meant. “...Cool.”

“May I come in?” she repeated, still not having stepped across the threshold.

“Uh, sure.” She did nothing, amusement simmering into annoyance. “Sure, you can come in,” I amended.

The amusement returned. She threw down the hood of her cloak and crossed into my room, ignoring the complete mess I’d made of it (I’m very skilled at making messes in motel rooms because honestly what else are they good for) and deposited the thermos and bag on the windowside-table, clearing said table of dust and at least ten dead bugs. With quick, deft movements, she opened the bag, pulled a bowl and plate from it, stacked the bowl atop the plate, and emptied a thick red fluid from the thermos into the bowl. Reaching back into the bag, she arranged bread and greens around what I realised must be a type of soup.

“I’m very careful about what I put into my body,” she informed me, watching me watch her, “Which means I end up preparing all my meals myself.”

“Sounds kinda time-consuming,” I remarked.

“We all must spend time consuming,” she replied evenly.

“Yep, that’s capitalism.”

“I meant food.” She gave me a sharp look which mellowed into something placid. “Well, nourishment. In this case,” she gestured to her creation, “Soup.”

“Gee, thanks.” 

“I do hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

“No, don't worry. I’m cool.”

I sat down to try the soup. Nampire, smiling, kept her eyes fixed on my spoon as I brought it to my mouth and sipped from it. The soup actually didn’t taste like horseshit.

“The soup actually doesn’t taste like horseshit,” I said.

Nampire went smug. “Thank you.”

Her soup was salty, creamy, and genuinely delicious. It was so red it had to be tomato-based, but it had a meaty flavour tomato soup usually lacked. “What’s in this?”

With a grin in her voice, she replied, “Home-made bouillon, tomatoes, creamed mozzarella, and bits of sausage crumble.”

I wondered why Nampire found that list of ingredients so hilarious. “It’s good.” After a moment, I added, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Ah, so she was one of those ‘my pleasure’ types. Gross.

I wasn’t all that into Having Conversations With People, so for a while there were no sounds but me slurping soup and chowing down on bread. Sometimes I take a bite of bread and I’m like ‘damn, bread is fucking great.’ This was one of those times.

“We could socialise like adults,” Nampire offered after a particularly loud and probably very rude crunch.

“Or we could socialise healthcare,” I returned.

“The two are not mutually exclusive.”

She was right. I rolled my eyes and took another bite of bread to be absolutely certain I’d say the next sentence with my mouth full for a maximum disgust factor. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t find you that interesting.”

She raised her jet-black eyebrows. “You will.” She paused. “Agent Crawford tells me you have an affinity for the… monsters.”

“Wow, you’re _terrible_ at casually changing the subject.”

She stared at me. 

“The monsters, the ‘evil minds,’ yeah yeah whatever,” I said, gesticulating with my spoon and flicking bits of soup across the walls. “You name it, I can use my super special autism-boosted Empathy Powerz on it.” Now it was my turn to be terrible at casually changing the subject. “I don’t think the guy who killed Elise Nichols killed the girl in the field. It’s a copycat killer, and not even a good one. I think we’re dealing with a second vampire.”

“How peculiar,” Nampire observed. “A _vampire_. I wonder who it could possibly be.”

“It’s gonna be pretty hard to find out.”

“What did your copycat do that Elise Nichols’s killer didn’t do?” she asked, crossing her legs. “What gave it away?”

I shrugged again. “Everything. The exsanguination was the same, the patterns of impaling a direct replica. But it was a bat statue, not a stag head, and it wasn’t a disappearance, wasn’t a private murder. The body was, you know… displayed. The killer, the Shrike, made sure it was a performance." I paused and slurped more soup. "Idiot. He’s probably a theatre kid, lesbehonest.”

Nampire smiled. “Are you reconstructing the killer’s fantasies? What problems does he have?”

I snorted. “He kills people, so, yanno, just a few.”

Nampire’s smile flickered. “I’m sure you have a few problems of your own,” she murmured.

“Hell no,” I said. “Being forced to look at gory crimes all day even though I’m already off the shits can’t possibly be a bad idea, right?”

“Right,” she agreed. “Well. I’m glad there’s nothing to worry about. For either of us. We’re just alike, Willa Triscuit. Just alike.”

“Bitch?? You’ve known me for two days??”

Nampire tilted her head, examining me. “I’m a quick study.”

“I bet _you_ used to be a theatre kid. Just like the Minnesota Shrike.”

“Just like the Minnesota Shrike,” she agreed. “And yes: I was passionate about the theatre. A long time ago,” she added with an odd smile. “A long, long time ago.”

“In a galaxy far far away,” I completed. “With your friend Palpatine and your pal Friendpatine.”

“I think,” Nampire said, “I think Uncle Jack sees you as a decorative dagger, barely sharp enough to cut. Ornate, unique, set apart from the others. Used with great fanfare on special occasions, but generally not functional.”

“You’re literally so fucking weird."

I was intrigued, though. There’s literally nothing more interesting to me than, well, me—which is why I was always taking uquizzes. “How do _you_ see me?”

“The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by.”

“What the fuck.”

*

A few hours later, results came in from the FBI lab. The shred of metal Keverly had found had been successfully analysed and its origin point matched. That specific type of metal, with its specific scoring, was found at six construction sites across Minnesota. Which meant we now had to go look at six construction sites. I prepared myself to see and use a lot of porta-potties. 

*

I saw and used a lot of porta potties.

*

In addition to porta potties, I also saw a lot of offices and files. Looking through files seemed like something the FBI just kinda Does, so I decided to do it too. There was nothing unusual in the files at any of the offices at the first five construction sites, but at the sixth, while digging through their cabinets, I found the file of one dude who had quit work the day before Elise Nichols disappeared. I was like ‘seems kinda sus’ and Nampire was like ‘seems kinda sus’ so we agreed it seemed kinda sus. I read the name out to the construction company’s secretary; it was “Garob Nakett Jobbs.”

“Ain’t that the founder of Apple?” I asked.

“Um, no,” the secretary said. “Garob Nakett Jobbs is one of our pipe threaders.”

“Hm,” I said, putting on my most intelligent thinking face. “Is there anything… _suspicious_ … about Garob Nackett Jobbs, who is not the founder of Apple but rather one of your pipe threaders?”

“Sometimes he shows up to work all bloodstained but I figured working construction was just Like That,” the secretary said. He pulled out a joint and started smoking weed.

“Hm,” I said.

“Hm,” Nampire said. 

“Does Garob Nackett Jobbs have a daughter?” I asked.

“You know, you don’t have to call him Garob Nackett Jobbs every single time you say his name,” the secretary remarked, exhaling smoke right into my face. “Just ‘Garob’ or ‘Jobbs’ will probably do. Even ‘Nackett’ would probably work.”

“But ‘Garob Nackett Jobbs’ sounds more dramaaaaatic,” I whined. “Anyway, does he have a daughter? About nineteen years old, wind-chafed, plain but pretty?”

“The goddamn shit are you on about?” he asked. “Wind-chafed, plain but pretty? Are you checkin’ out nineteen year old girls now?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a thirty-seven year old straight woman. I’m not checkin’ out nineteen year old girls, I’m checkin’ out murderers. I mean, I’m _investigating_ murderers. I’m- you know what? Nevermind.”

Nampire smirked. 

“Do you have an address for Garob Nackett Jobbs?” I snapped.

The secretary rolled his eyes. “Sure.”

He fished around in his desk and gave me a crumpled hiring form. I scanned it and discovered that Garob Nackett Jobbs’s phone number was 69-420-6969, and he apparently lived at 69420 Serialkiller Avenue in Minneapolis.

I turned to Nampire, fist-pumping the air. “ROAD TRIP!”

*

I left the office humming. The secretary took a bathroom break. Nampire stayed behind, telling me she suddenly remembered she had to make a phone call.

*

That very moment, I’d later find out, at 69420 Serialkiller Avenue in Mineapolis, a nineteen year old girl, wind-chafed, plain but pretty, picked up the phone. With her ear to the receiver, she listened for a second. “Dad?” she called out. “It’s for you!”

Her father, Garob Nackett Jobbs, took the phone from her. There was blood under his fingernails. “Hello?”

“They know,” the woman on the other end of the line said ominously. Her voice was mellifluous, tinged with an Eastern European accent. 

“Huh?” Garob Nackett Jobbs asked.

The woman sighed and completely dropped her dark tone. “They know about the eight girls you stuck up on antlers and exsanguinated,” she continued boredly. Then, abruptly, she hung up.

One second later, she called back.

“Yeah?” Garob Nackett Jobbs asked.

“Props for that, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Garob Nackett Jobbs said.

“Serial killer squad!” squealed the woman. Then she hung up again.

Garob Nackett Jobbs shrugged. “Alright, lads,” he said to his wife and daughter. “The FBI—which stands for Federal Bunch of Idiots, I think—is on its way, so I think I’m gonna kill you both.”

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to [sam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscarisaac/pseuds/oscarisaac/) (the dude to whom this work is gifted) for creating the character Nampire, and special thanks to my friends [ari](https://kadywicker.tumblr.com/) and [qi](https://neostalgia.tumblr.com/) for their brilliant cannalysis (hannibal-the-cannibal analysis). and, of course, thanks to bryan fuller, thomas harris, and [mark antony](https://aziraphalesbian.tumblr.com/search/mark+antony).


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